Comparison of Airband Scanners

This is a comparison of the signal reception quality from three different airband radio scanners
(108 - 137 MHz). The models are:

ICOM IC-A6 handlehd transceiver

Uniden Bearcat BC340CRS base scanner

RadioShack PRO-84 handheld scanner

ICOM IC-A6 ($275)

Uniden Bearcat BC340CRS ($80)

RadioShack PRO-84 ($70)

Transceiver vs Scanner

The ICOM IC-A6 can receive and transmit (transceiver), and is made specifically to cover
the aviation band.
The Bearcat and RadioShack models are generic scanners that cover many different bands. These
are receive-only. They are also
a lot less expensive than the ICOM.

How the test was done

The three units were fed from the same external (roof mounted) antenna and were tuned to various
AWOS, ASOS and ATIS transmissions in the area. The recordings were taken within a few minutes
of each other, so atmospheric conditions were not a factor in their difference in signal quality.
The squelch was turn off.

Conclusion

The reception was vastly better on the ICOM.
Of course that is to be expected from a higher-priced unit, but my impression was that the
performance significantly outran the price difference. This is probably due to the fact that the
ICOM-A6 circuitry is optimized for the aviation band, whereas the other models had to make
a compromise across many bands.

From a roof mount antenna (roughly 30 ft AGL) the ICOM unit can receive ground stations
as far way as 40 NM. The other two models could not reliably receive stations that were
7 NM away, and many times could hear music from commercial broadcast stations bleeding through.

The ICOM unit can receive aircraft transmissions from much farther away, even as far away as
100 NM. The other models also do better with aircraft transmissions. But a quantitative
comparison is hard to make because it is impossible to do repeated observations from the same
aircraft transmission.